BYPASSING THE BURN BARREL

Today, Thursday, was the day after the termination of our statewide mask mandate. When I opened our local paper on my tablet, I was greeted with a large photo on the front page of women gathered around a burn barrel throwing their face masks into the fire. They look determined, joyful, and free all at the same time. The accompanying article noted a range of emotions from reluctance and caution to joy were stirred by the end of the mandate. Apparently, the mask burners in the photo experienced the joy. A local pub hosted this mask burning. It provided the barrel and the fire and encourage patrons to throw their masks into the flames to symbolize the end of a tough year. The photo of masks being tossed into the burn barrel from the hands of those whose faces were filled with joy and freedom reminded me of our doing something similar at my home church when I was a teenager. No, it wasn’t masks we burned, and, though it may have appeared so to passers-by, we weren’t a cult. We had been experiencing a real move of the Spirit among our youth that increased our passion for spiritual things and our devotion to Christ. There was even a spontaneous outbreak of the Spirit in our teen Sunday School class; there was no teaching that day nor sleeping during class. We wept, shouted, and worshiped Christ the hour long. During this time of revival, we gathered before church to pray, and when service time came, we spilled into the sanctuary from the prayer room worshiping God; the service got no further with its usual activities. With such a spiritual renewal there comes a desire to be rid of anything and everything that pulls one to the world and sin, that binds and fetters the soul, that drains, dampens, depletes one’s love for Christ. So, one night, I cannot remember who suggested it or prepared for it, but outside the church, a burn barrel was set up. We gathered around and threw in anything that had been a worldly or carnal influence on our souls—things like 8-tracks and records of worldly music. There was real joy and freedom felt as we sang and worshiped around the burn barrel. Such a thing was not original to us. Scripture provided a precedent. The book of Acts chronicles a great, supernatural spiritual stirring in Ephesus when the Gospel came to that town in the early days of Christianity. Many, practitioners of magic and other Occult worshipers among them, came to know Christ. These brought books and other paraphernalia associated with their occultic and divination practices and worship and threw them in the fire. The thing about dropping something in a burn barrel is that there is no going back. That thing will be burned up, gone. You cannot reclaim it. It is irrecoverably incinerated. You can’t get it back. This isn’t true of just throwing an item away. Early in my pastorate, a young man rededicated his life to Christ and threw in the trash stacks of CDs of worldly music that had been a part of his rebellion against God and rejection of faith. Later, his mother told me, “I dug them out of the trash and stored them in closet in case he backslides. He spent tons of money on those.” He did backslide, as his mother expected, and, perhaps, his doing so was precipitated by her lack of faith in and support of his commitment. He recovered his CDs. He could not have done so if he'd burned them. See, a burn barrel is about a no-turning-back surrender. Surrender is giving something up. Of course, the items we dropped into the burn barrel were only symbols of the thing we were really surrendering to Christ—ourselves, our hearts, our lives, our future, our passions and our lusts. The older I get, the longer I’m in ministry, the more I realize this is the real objection people have with God. They do not want to surrender. True salvation requires surrender. This explains so much. This is why some who were raised to know Christ strike out with such vitriol against their upbringing, against church, against God. They have to make the aforementioned bad to discount the message that salvation is through the surrender of self to God. I do not claim there has been no false teaching, no hypocrites in the church, or no cultic churches. But, those are exceptions. Not all the churches, people, teaching, and practices in them were errant and malicious. No. That’s not what this vitriol is about. This is about discrediting the dissimulators of the Gospel, in order to dismiss the Gospel. The Gospel calls for surrender through denouncing of self and acceptance of the truth. The same is true with 99% of the proliferating new atheists. Today it’s vogue to be atheist. Why? Being an atheist is just another tactic to avoid the need for surrender. If there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere existing, Creator-God, then everyone is answerable and accountable to Him. If so, one needs to bow to this God in surrender to His will, word, and Being. This, these self-proclaimed atheists do not want to do. Surrender. Surrender opinions. Surrender passions. Surrender to the awareness one has done wrong. Surrender to accountability. Surrender to the need to make restitution, make things right with others. Surrender of habits, addictions. Surrender of bitterness, grudges. Surrender of pride. Surrender of oneself. Some walked past the pub’s provided burn barrel without depositing their masks. Despite the freedom in giving up one’s mask, as the article noted, “some local residents remained reluctant to eliminate mask-wearing from their daily routines.” Whatever those reasons, they meant more to the wearers than freedom. Same with surrendering one’s life to Christ. Folks’ reasons for not surrendering to Christ, whatever they are, mean more to them than the forgiveness, eternal life, peace, and freedom that they would have if they would but surrender. To their eternal detriment, they bypass the burn barrel. Perhaps, having a burn barrel celebration is a good idea. I mean, if a pub can sponsor one, why can’t a church? If so, would you toss something in or bypass the burn barrel? -Pastor Clifford Hurst